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Eugène Delacroix
REFLECTIONS
Tasso in the Madhouse
6 September–14 December 2008
As the third in the series of ‘In Focus’ exhibitions it initiated in 2005, part of the museum’s ongoing research programme, the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ presented a small but highly select exhibition of works by the French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). As the last such exhibition before the second phase in the reconstruction of the museum (15 December 2008–mid-2010), it opened up promising new perspectives for the future.
The presentation centred around a jewel among the numerous works by Delacroix in the Römerholz: his Tasso in the Madhouse of 1839. For the very first time, this important painting was seen together with an earlier version Delacroix painted in 1824, which is now privately owned. A comparison of these two works, and their display, together with a further twenty-five works by Delacroix, one of the leading exponents of French Romanticism, enabled us to take a wholly new view of this key work of nineteenth-century art, and of the artist. The thematic diversity of the exhibition also shed light on the process by which a great artist fashioned an identity for himself on the threshold of modernism. Delacroix was fascinated not so much by Tasso’s literary works as by his tragic fate, around which many legends were quick to form. Delacroix saw in this ill-fated genius – as well as in other tortured individuals of literature and the fine arts pictured such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Goethe’s Faust – a reflection of his own struggle for identity as an artist in the social conditions that prevailed following the French Revolution and the Restoration. The exhibition paid particular attention to the small to medium format in which Delacroix was able to pursue his private agenda.
An exhibition catalogue, published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich, is available in English and German.
For further information go to the press notice at www.roemerholz.ch/delacroix
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Eugène Delacroix, Tasso in the Madhouse,
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Eugène Delacroix, Tasso in the Madhouse,
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Eugène Delacroix, The death of Sardanapalus, |
Eugène Delacroix, Michelangelo in his studio, |
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Eugène Delacroix, The Lamentation, |
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Honoré Daumier at the Römerholz Collection
9 February–24 August 2008
The 200th anniversary of Honoré Daumier’s birth took place on 26 February 2008. To mark the occasion, the Oskar Reinhart Collection put on an interesting programme of events, including an exhibition of the artist’s work focusing on the substantial group of Daumiers in the museum.
On Saturday, 9 February a Daumier symposium was held in the picture gallery, when international experts discussed Daumier’s work. The film Honoré Daumier: Il Faut Etre de Son Temps by the art historian and film-maker Judith Wechsler was screened at the Römerholz Collection throughout the event, from 9 February to 24 August. The trilingual (English, French and German) commentary looked at key aspects of Daumier’s life and work.
See detailed press notice at www.roemerholz.ch/daumier.
